Thursday, July 22, 2010

Big Perm

Have you ever sat for FOUR hours in a salon chair, with each section of your hair being rolled up tightly and tearing at your scalp, with a stiff neck because, damn, those rollers are heavy?

And then get slathered up with perm chemicals that make you wish you were wearing a hazmat suit?...WHILE hungover?

No? Hmm. Odd.

Yes, I chose to do all of these things last weekend (yes even the hangover part, I did NOT say no to shots the night before…D’OH!), and now, my stick-straight hair is wavy and beachy and very Jessica Simpson.

Business on the left, party on the right!!

This is the third time I’ve gotten a perm, or as some call it a “body wave” (but I think that sounds more 80s than “perm”). I think it’s the perfect summer hairstyle because you literally don’t do anything to it when you get out of the shower. (Which matches my effort level to a T).

It does get less curly as the days go on, and starts to turn straight (because my hair really likes to be all business) but all I do is take a shower again and the curls are “reactivated.” Very high-tech.

I traveled to a small South Carolina town to get the perm because I’ve only gotten perms from Kathleen and I know she knows what she’s doing. And, when I asked my normal stylist if she could perm it, she looked at me as if I just asked her to re-shingle the roof.

So, that’s why I drove almost four hours each way last weekend to perm my hair. I also needed to catch up on my celebrity magazine reading, a perfect distraction during the grueling process.

The longest part of the perm process was rolling each strand, because I have a LOT of hair on my head. Kathleen was much more patient than I was, and we gabbed about hometown gossip. It wasn't even my hometown, but I love hometown gossip.I now know who’s a trainwreck and who’s not; who’s married and who shouldn’t be married because he’s a cheater. Bastard. And someone else got fake boobs last week. For REAL.

Speaking of trainwrecks, I also read all about Lindsay Lohan’s jail sentence and scrutinized Jessica Simpson (my hair idol!) in the photos of her birthday in Fiji.

I took very enlightening quizzes about my love life and found out that my boyfriend does NOT show the signs of being a cheater (Whew. Thanks Cosmo).

After TWO hours of rolling the hair, I was told to cover my face with a towel while Kathleen squirted (that’s what she said!) each roller with pungent, burning chemicals.A warning about the smell went out to everyone else in the salon, seriously. Kathleen gave them a heads up (hahaha get it? Man, I kill me.)

I covered my face with a towel so the liquid wouldn’t drop in my eyes, although the plan sort of backfired because the towel made it so I was huffing the chemicals, and my hangover really hated that.

And then, with all the liquid now saturated, my head weighed about 1,000 pounds and I had to sit there for 15 minutes with droplets falling onto my lap, burning holes into Paris Hilton’s head. (A silver lining?)

My hair had to be rinsed out (painful to lay your head into a sink with rollers, FYI) and then the rollers had to be dried with an entire ROLL of paper towels before being doused again with more liquid and then rinsed again twice before the rollers could come out.

Oh, and I wasn’t allowed to wash my hair for the next 48 hours. (The reason for this can be expertly explained at the end of the movie Legally Blonde).

This posed a problem when it started raining that night when my friends and I went to dinner. My dear friend Katy held her pocketbook over my head as we ran to shelter, not wanting those four hours to go to waste.

She may have regretted that decision when I was the smelly person in the tiny car for the four-hour trip back home. Pungent chemicals aren't very becoming on a person.

I’m starting to get used to it being curly — now that I can wash it and all — although last night I did pine for it to be straight.Perhaps the mirror in the bathroom at the bar was anti-curly. Made me look bad.

Also, my friends called me 80s singer Pat Benatar and the mermaid from Splash (obviously a movie I’ve never seen).

I can always blow dry it straight if I want to, but that’s a lot of effort. I like to keep things as lazy as possible. I’ll leave business hair for the winter.Party on.